Theology, Comedy, Politics

by Marcus Pound, Ashley John Moyse (Editor), Scott A Kirkland (Editor)

What relevance has comedy for the global crises of late-modernity and the theological critique thereof? Coming out of the experience of war, a generation of modern theologians such as Donald MacKinnon, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and, more recently, Rowan Williams, in their accommodation to literature, choose tragedy as the paradigm for theological understanding and ethics. By contrast, this book develops recent philosophical, anthropological, and psychoanalytical studies of humor to develop a theology of comedy. By deconstructing secular accounts of comedy it advances the argument that comedy is not only participatory of the divine, but that it should inform our thinking about liturgical, sacramental, and ecclesial life if we are to respond to the postmodern age in which having fun is an ideological imperative of market forces.

259 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 3, 2019

Reviews

[Dan Glover · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I have to admit, I didn't make it through this relatively small volume. I rarely don't finish a book but my library loan ran out before I finished. This was not really what I expected. It was aimed at an academic audience and assumed a fair bit of its reader. The title and parameters were enticing - I mean who wouldn't like a book about theology, comedy, and politics in the era of the Trump presidency, right? I appreciate what the author was aiming at, and I didn't think I could lose interest in a book where these three ingredients had been tossed in a blender together, but I did. There were moments when I chuckled, and moments when the author went in unexpected directions, but overall I found myself having to go back a few pages to recall what train of thought we were on because I was having trouble staying on track. Perhaps I will pick it up and finish it some day....
[The technical data about the book on goodreads is incorrect - it is 235 pages long; I think I made it to page 160 or so...]